The Dream Life
by LuminaCarina
Summary: Because not all ends well. Or: George Weasley and the Second Wizarding War.


**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter**

 **Words:** 10787

 **Summary:** Because not all ends well. Or: George Weasley and the Second Wizarding War

#

When they ask me ''Dad, what was it like?'' it's a stupid question, because … I don't _know_. I don't know what it was like. I did my best supress the memory, to swallow it the way you swallow the blood in your mouth after busting a tooth, or maybe I absorbed it, osmosis-like, in order to pretend that the knowledge was always there, inside me, and that I wasn't changed as a result of living through it.

I tell them: ''Ask your mother,'' and it's a stupid answer because Angie is sure to burst into tears whenever the topic gets brought up and the kids know it and they never ask her the way I tell them to. They sulk away like the little brats they are and then I get about a month of relaxation until they bring it up the next time, again, and then I repeat what I told them before and the cycle continues on, indefinitely.

The thing about it all is that there are secrets, and then there are _secrets_. Most you tell, others you sell, but some – some, you keep. You keep them because you don't know what else to do with them, because you've kept them inside for so long that the very idea of sharing it is disturbing, reminiscent of vomiting up your heart and putting it on display, and, well. You keep them because you don't even know what the secret is anymore, because it's been embedded within you for so long that you can't tell it apart from your organs anymore, because it's part of you now, and you can't – I don't know.

I'm not like Ron. My baby brother, he tells his kids and my kids and all the other kids who want to know what the war was like about – about his great adventure while he was wandering the wilderness with Harry and Hermione, about You-Know-Who's snake and talking necklaces and magical swords, and – and it all sounds like some _grand big fairy tale_ , doesn't it? The kids love it. They lap it up like cats with cream or something, playing silly games and pretending to be at war, and sometimes my Roxy is Hermione and sometimes she's Bellatrix and other times she cocks it up as an unfortunate victim of the Death Eaters.

But that wasn't war. That was a quest. An adventure. A game. War was … it was hell on earth. It was hiding in the basements of random people who would take mercy on you, wearing clothes you hadn't washed in days because you couldn't afford to leave the relative safety said basement supplied, slowly going stir crazy from captivity. War was dancing to a tune you thought was going to be your last, and sneaking outside to steal newspapers. It was bullshitting on the radio, telling lies and nonsense to give false hope to some poor family out there, who was sheltering a muggle-born in their attic.

And I don't know how to tell it. How do you translate something like that into a bedtime story? Is there a formula for turning a butchering into an honourable duel? I don't think so. It's probably just me, though.

#

For me, it started after You-Know-Who attacked the Ministry to get the prophecy. I don't know when it started for Harry (we don't talk about that shit; it was bad enough that we lived through it – we don't need to revisit it), but for me, it was the Ministry battle. I mean, me and Fred didn't take part in it, but it's hard to miss something that horrible when literally _everyone_ is talking about it.

We heard about it from the papers, and how awful is that? That the Order did something that big and then didn't tell us? My brother took part in that battle; my baby sister almost got tortured by the Lestrange bitch. I mean, damn, I know that we were seen as just empty-headed jokesters, just a pair of twats who cheated on their History OWL exam, but that still hurt.

Fred was really pissed about that. Went on a rant about the bloody Order and the bloody Headmaster and the bloody Ministry and then went on to fuck them all, in the eye, with a fucking _Firebolt_. Verity was shell-shocked. I don't think that she had ever seen either of us on such a rampage. She'd turned up her nose with that sweet lady-like delicacy and then refused to talk to Fred until he apologised and promised never to swear like that again.

It was … it felt like time had slowed down. Suddenly, we couldn't just waste the day away by lounging in the sun with our eyes half-closed and listening to the sounds of the busy Alley. There was urgency in our movements, like everything had to be done _right away_ , no time to waste, and it was wearing on us.

Verity broke first. It was around the time Hogwarts letters were being sent out, and we were expecting a whole lot of business in the following weeks. In the middle of stocking up the shelves, Verity just suddenly burst into tears. It was shocking, and ugly, and kind of horrifying. ''I'm sorry, Mr Weasley, but I'm just – my mum's a muggle-born, and I can't – I'm so sorry –''

Fred had a wild-eyed look on his face, and I couldn't blame him. Because Verity was this composed, professional lady, with perfectly coifed curls and lips painted a bright purple who reminded us about the work that had to be done and the meetings to get our licenses and sell the more serious line of products, always blank-faced and mildly sardonic, and to see her blubbering like a baby was akin to seeing an elephant in a tutu share a cup of tea with Professor McGonagall.

I don't know what I told her to calm her down. Maybe I made jokes like I always do, or maybe I was serious for once and the shock of it shut her up, or – I don't know. But eventually Verity stopped shedding tears all over the box of Acid Pops, and we took her upstairs into our apartment to lie her down. She fell asleep there in my bed, curled up like a little girl with those inch-long red-coloured nails of hers leaving new moon indents in her shoulders.

I remember, we kept expecting something. Something, I don't know, something _big_. We were all just waiting for that one great _fuck you_ from You-Know-Who, and the calm was killing us. It was the calm before the storm, you know. That smell-taste of thunder on the roof of your mouth, the oncoming shit-storm that would gobble you up and not even bother to spit out your bones. We could all feel it, and we all just kind of … waited for it. Waited for someone to jump out and say: ''That's it – game over.'' But that someone never did.

Instead, we got Harry-bloody-Potter. The boy hero. The saviour. Whenever we heard people talk about Harry, we could hear that capital ''S'' thud into place, like he wasn't Harry anymore, but something else. You see, we don't really have a religion. We're godless, because what god out there in the big white world was tough enough to survive the magical world? What kind of miracle would be big enough to make us think that it wasn't just magic? But in that time, in that atmosphere, I think Harry was becoming it. Our god, I mean. In a way. Kind of. Maybe. Probably not, but you know what I'm trying to say.

But anyway. We were sick and tired of that shit. The Ministry was running around, choking us all up with propaganda, and – we were tired. The ''U No Poo'' campaign we ran was just … it helped us cope. You see, me and Fred, we weren't afraid. Not really. We were tense and snappy and we got irritated easily, but we didn't fear Him. He was about as real to us as magic is real to a muggle. We didn't grow up in His shadow the way Bill did. I realised later that we should've been so fucking afraid we should've shat Sickles at the very thought of Him. But, at the time, it was all a bit of harmless fun. ''U No Poo…'' If that isn't funny, I don't what is. Even today it makes me snort.

Verity helped around in the shop a lot. Nowadays, people talk about how natural me and Fred were at business, but we weren't. Like, at all. Verity is the real reason behind our success. She ran the shop with an iron fist; it only seemed at first glance that we were her superiors.

I think that _open_ war began … probably around the time Hogwarts opened for a new year. The kids went to school and everybody just kind of _breathed easy_ , because Hogwarts was safe and it had Dumbledore and You-Know-Who couldn't get them there. Don't get me wrong, families were still holding the hands of under-eleven kids tightly, and none of the kiddies were allowed to go anywhere on their own. Of course, that didn't mean the brats obeyed their parents most of the time, if at all.

#

Around October, we had our first real taste of war. It was Florean Fortescue who got zapped. See, Mr Fortescue had been saying things, giving comments to the Prophet about his opinion of the Death Eaters. A lot of people we doing the same, so his comments weren't even that strange, but they still targeted him. It was probably because of how many people knew him, and isn't that awful? That they were picking their victims on the merit of how many people would miss them?

It happened something like this: in the middle of the night – I think it was very late on a Sunday or really early on a Monday – we woke up because there was noise. And not the usual nightly noise of the Alley, with the random cats and random drunks; it was this yowling, a low, keening noise, painful-like, and it _echoed_. Merlin did it echo. Fred rushed to the window and told me: ''It's Fortescue, they're here for him,'' and I _knew_. Even as we tried to open the doors or break them or – or something – we couldn't. We were locked in – no, we were _spelled_ in. And all we could do was listen and maybe watch as they dragged the poor man out by his nightgown and executed him just like that. It was all anyone could do.

That was the first time I understood why everyone called Him You-Know-Who. It's because you _did_ know who. You didn't need the name to recognise him. You knew Him in the way the darkness of the alleyways smelled and the shade of moonlight coming through your window and you knew him from the colour of your death as it came for you. That was the first time I appreciated what the Killing Curse did. Just a flash of light and _bam_! You're gone. I understood then why muggles persecuted us in the Middle Ages.

Nobody slept that night. The whole Alley was awake and watching, first Florean's death and later we just stayed up, fixated on that disgusting mark in the sky, like a scar left over from the figurative blood spilled (the Killing Curse is almost elegant; no blood, no blemish on the skin remains). I could tell, because the next morning Fred called an Alley-wide meeting to discuss what had happened and every single person who showed up had these ugly rings around their eyes: sunken in and the colour of Verity's lipstick, perhaps a shade or two paler.

Florean didn't have any kids, and I think we were all grateful for that, but his widow was the first one to enter our store. She had her hair done up the same way she wore it every other day of her life, but the corners of her mouth were turned downwards like gravity finally got to her and she was chalky pale. She looked at us straight in the eye and said, calm as can be: ''I'm sorry you had to witness that, boys,'' like her husband's death was some embarrassing accident that had revealed to us exactly what colour she preferred her knickers to be. Fred got this constipated look on his face, like he wanted to – I don't know, say something? Maybe.

The whole meeting didn't get any better. Mrs Fortescue acted like a host and not a guest, talking about the discount they were having at the parlour and commenting on the weather, and Verity brought biscuits and tea for everybody and we all argued and cried and got nothing done. I now realise that it was still too soon for any decisive action – the wound too fresh to be wrapped up – but back then I was furious at the people I was surrounded with. I'm pretty sure I broke my teacup that day.

Verity said: ''Give it time, Mr Weasley, and all the horses will come home eventually.'' I don't know if that's how that saying goes, but it sort of made me feel like a right tool. Here Verity was, half-blood with a muggle-born mum, and I, a pure-blood, was throwing a tantrum. It was … I was ashamed of myself.

The Ministry came that day, too late to do anything other than pick up Florean's body and gather statements, and then the Minister gave out some inspirational speech later in the evening while mentioning the word ''Aurors'' far too many times for it not to be a recruitment speech, and life went on. The skull in the sky stayed up there for three days straight, because there was no way to remove it and its colour didn't fade in the light of the day.

I was disturbed by how quickly we forgot what we had seen. I mean, today, if someone was killed like that, you could bet your arse that everyone would talk about it for months, saying stuff like ''How could they?'' and ''Why would they do that?'' but we just … I don't know. Got on with our own business.

#

Scrimgeour was a bastard with a silver pole up his posh arse, and he should have been booted out of office the second we saw his ugly mug. That said, he wasn't a bad Minister. He at least had the balls to do something about You-Know-Who even if that _something_ was moronic.

I remember all those posters he had taped up in our windows. _Stamp out the enemy!_ poked your eyes from every which way, and after a while it kind of got annoying. I got so many headaches because of those posters. They were ruining business too; no one was in the mood for pranks and sweets after seeing a black-and-white Auror waving his wand around – at least, I think it was an Auror; it might have been a robber, or a Death Eater – especially not once the little kids started playing at ''Aurors and Death Eaters.'' There was more than one incident of mothers doling out punishments after witnessing those games, though I'm not sure why. At least the brats had the right idea of going after the scum and bringing them down.

Then, the second attack happened, only this time it was the whole district that was targeted instead of one bloke. I should note the accomplishment this time: the Aurors arrived early enough to do something about the masked men running around and causing chaos.

Fred and I participated in this battle; we were shooting stunners left and right, and I'm pretty sure I got one bastard with a cutting hex to the neck. I'm not certain about it, but the doubt over that death gnawed at me and I had nightmares for a whole month afterward. I never saw the bastard's face; in my dreams, sometimes he was reedy thin, sometimes fat with a bloated stomach and a ruddy nose, and other times he was just this bone-white mask with blood staining it around the mouth. I never knew which option was the worst one. Or the best.

Sometimes I still dream of it, and Angie gets this really queer look on her face, like she wants to ask but doesn't truly want to know, and I think I won't ever tell her about it. She doesn't deserve something as fucked up as that. She's got enough shit on her plate even without it. Besides, this dream's one _those_ secrets – an integral part of me, kind of like a kidney.

Afterwards, it was quiet. Really quiet. All you could hear was the Aurors talking to each other, yelling for Healers and such, and the sound of rubble being charmed away. Verity was helping with the clearing work, and I was having my leg bound up because Healer Mallory was of a mind that I would bleed out to my death if I wasn't wrapped up in three layers of gauze _at least_. I don't know where Fred was, but when he returned he had a box of pastries with him, and a great big shiner covering the left side of his face. He said: '' _Fucking_ Aurors,'' and then he refused to say anything. He was starting to swear a bit too much at that point.

In that moment, I remembered what Diagon Alley had looked like when I was a kid. It was this grand big carnival, it seemed to me, with everything possible if only you just believed in it enough. People wore colourful robes and witches had hairstyles taller than I was, and there was just this sense of magic about it, the way there wasn't even in our house. After that battle, it was unrecognisable. Rubble everywhere was slowly disappearing and revealing the extent of damage underneath. Our shop's exterior had been _wrecked_. A lot of people had died. Days afterwards, we were walking around avoiding bloodstains, listening to people cry.

After that, mum Floo-ed over. She was so panicked and overbearing that day. ''Georgie, are you alright? Do you need something? Does your leg hurt?'' I think she almost made herself sick with worry that day and that dad got in a serious conversation with that sickly friend of his from work. Words like ''tragedy'' and ''disgrace'' and ''repercussions'' got thrown around a lot, but my leg hurt and I was tired so I don't remember much.

But this is what really matters about the attack on Diagon Alley: it got me and Fred into the Order, full time. We'd proved ourselves, we were ready and all that shit, and we were willing. I'm pretty sure that the _willing_ part was the most important one.

#

When Fred died, all I could think of, in that one moment that his life went out like a fucking candle, was: _we were so close_. So close to the end, so close to a normal life, just – so close. But when we first joined the Order we didn't worry about any of that. We were stupid and young – I'm pretty sure the two words are mutually inclusive – and all we could see was the chance to save some bloke out there from the same fate Mr Fortescue had suffered.

You know that itch of having a wound scabbed over, this weird urge to rip the scab off and see the blood well up in that little tear in your skin, and then to lick away the blood and watch it scab over once more and then to do it all over again? Yeah, I think that's the best way to describe what me and Fred felt like when we got our first mission from the Order, which doesn't even make _sense_ , but whatever. The fact that the mission included Death Eaters was even better.

That first mission happened sometime around … May, I think? I'm not all that certain about the dates. But the weather was fair enough and I can remember flowers blooming in a grimy pot on somebody's balcony. The mission was simple: follow the Death Eating snots into the Knockturn Alley market and report what they bought and who they bought it from. Now, these two were just grunts, lowlifes really, and this wasn't all that important in the grand scheme of things, but we were so painfully proud of ourselves for that, for helping out in the war effort. We were still little boys, even if we felt like men.

Later on, this became one of my … well, not nightmares, because I have much better nightmares than that, but … I remember, this wasn't the first death I witnessed, but it was the first gruesome one. Can you imagine: you're following two morons to the black market, and everything's going the way it should, and then out of the blue one of the blokes gets his head blown off. It was like – I don't know, one moment he was perfectly fine, talking to his buddy, and the next he was a bloody, gore-y smear on the alley wall. Black bricks, grey skies, and brain matter dripping down the wall. The whole world stopped still as the headless corpse fell to the floor with a quiet _thud_.

His friend went into what I would later learn was _the mission mode_. In fact, I would later learn how to enter it myself. But back then, it was shocking because this bloke just didn't even blink at his friend's death. He just pulled out his wand and started shooting off curses. Now, the way Harry and Ronniekinns tell it, you'd think that every Death Eater under the sun knew only the Killing Curse, but that isn't true. You need tremendous power and strength of character to off someone with an AK, and few actual Death Eaters could do it. It made us respect scum like Lestrange a bit, in the sickest way possible. But that didn't mean the regular forces were weaklings – they weren't. But anyway. This guy was doling out _Bombardas_ and _Diffindos_ and _Incendios_ and what have you, and curses that I'd never even heard of. Knockturn Alley has never been too legal, but back then you really had to pity the people who called it home, because they were all caught in the crossfire.

I had to duck and weave to avoid the spellfire, and in doing so I gave up my disguise. Everybody knows that Weasleys have bright red hair. Everybody knew that Weasleys were Dumbledore's men. The Death Eater's focus shifted from general destruction to specifically attempting to kill me.

There's a primal fear in knowing you're about to die. That _thud-thud-thudding_ your heart does, where it skips a step and then stumbles over its own two feet – not that hearts have feet – but you know what I mean – it's terrifying. Breath-taking. Time-stealing. It's like slipping down a slippery slope of slippery stuff and then trying to regain your footing: you try your best but it just doesn't fucking work. I loved every second of it. I think I felt more alive in that moment than I did when my Roxy was born.

Fred saved my skin that day. One second I was rushing towards the Death Eater, wand out and certain that I was a dead man walking – the next, I crashed into a corpse drooling blood. A little dribble in the corner of the mouth, nothing much, just a few drops, no more than a spoonful. He wasn't wearing a mask and I could see it in his eyes: Death was knocking on his door, asking for the bloke to pay up. I remember his pupils were blown so wide you could barely see what colour his eyes were.

That's when the Aurors arrived.

(His eyes were brown.)

#

Kingsley got us out of the holding cells through repeated use of charm and bribery, which he claimed was a trade of favours owed. I'm pretty sure he had to sell his gorgeous chocolatey body in order to free us of our tragic imprisonment, so I felt indebted to him for way longer than I should have. But, when a man resorts to prostitution for you, it means something. (Kingsley called me an imbecile once I explained to him just why I always gave up my portion of the bacon to him later on.)

We hadn't technically done anything – at least, they didn't have any proof of any misdeeds of ours – so we got of lightly. A 5 Galleon fine is nothing when you really think about it, no matter how much money it looks like at first glance. Not that I don't value money, but _damn_ – money just isn't worth sleeping in a bed covered in unidentifiable sticky goo and being fed lumpy porridge that smelled like cabbage.

He got this disapproving look on his face and it even seemed like his bald head was shining ominously at us, all like: ''I'm so disappointed in you twins, and I'll be informing your mother about this, since she really should know what kind of delinquents she's raised,'' as if we got drunk and arrested for public indecency instead of nearly been caught spying of Death Eaters.

Fred was kind of dozing off by that point. He'd been awake for over thirty hours, refusing to sleep in case of _something_ , and so I had to support him as we went. Kingsley took him off my hands about the time we reached the atrium, his exact words being: ''You boys should rest now, you've had a trying day.'' I don't think I've ever heard anyone call witnessing somebody's head popping like an overripe grape and then engaging in a fight for their life a ''trying night'' before, but whatever.

We got carted off to Grimm Old Place to visit with the Order, and it was probably just exhaustion that made me not quip a few jokes about fireplaces and phoenixes. Because, you know … floo fire, fire rebirth … no? Well whatever. Waiting on us were Moody and Lupin, and I think they were trying to play at ''good cup, bad cup,'' as the muggles say it, because Moody laid into us like, right away, while Lupin went to make tea or something – in their relationship, Lupin would be the abused housewife, you just _knew_ it. Moody's attempt at tearing us a new one would've been more effective if we were awake enough to understand just what the hell he was saying though.

''What the bloody fucking hell happened, brat?'' That was Moody at his most enchanting, if you didn't know already. I mean, my Freddie always complains about the Malfoy brattling nowadays, and I've met the kid so I know that it wasn't exaggeration like Angie said, but Moody? He was the real thing. The original, if you would. Everyone else is just a copy.

Fred just sort of mumbled something and then went to sleep now that he was safe, head on the table and hair falling into his teacup. I'm pretty sure that Moody wanted to smack my brother awake, but didn't because then Lupin would give him a sad and mournful look of soul-deep disappointment that would make even a hard-core bastard like Moody feel like – you know, those looks Lupin used to give wouldn't make you feel like scum. You wouldn't even rank as pond scum. Fish tank scum, maybe. So, yeah, Moody refrained from his ingrained reaction – violence.

About that point Lupin stepped in. ''George, I understand that you're tired, but we just have a few questions and then you can go to sleep, alright?'' I nodded. You simply didn't refuse Lupin; it always felt like kicking a sopping wet kitten or some such. ''Can you tell us how you were spotted?''

I tried to think of something clever to say. Maybe a nifty word game, or a really good joke. But my brain felt like sludge, like someone had taken a whisk to it and tried to make whipped-brain or – ew, that was a gross mental image. Lupin had saint-like patience, which revealed itself when he stayed quiet and waited for me to think up an answer to – what was the question again? Oh right.

''We weren't,'' I admitted. ''Not at first. There was someone else – they vaporised the head of one the grunts. Well, not vaporised per se – see, there were these chunks and everything, but yeah. And then the other guy started shooting curses left and right, and a _Bombarda_ wrecked my coverage. So, the bloke saw me, saw my hair, and decided I was the culprit. Which, by the way, is utterly unfair. I mean, isn't it a crime to discriminate against gingers? But – yeah, who cares. The rest, as they say, is history.''

Moody, if possible, looked even more like he longed to wring my neck. I'm serious, he had a look on his face that I'd previously reserved for pretty girls seeing their boyfriends off to war in muggle moving pictures. Move-is, or Moovey, or something. It definitively moves in some way. Hey, that rhymes with Moody! Moody in a Moovey, the Moving Moody – oh, oh! The Moody Moovey, isn't that just amazing?

''Weasley, you need help. From the Healers.'' Well that was a rude thing to say. Perhaps I was a tad too sleepy, because I hadn't noticed I was saying all that aloud. Moody's face convinced me that he knew all about the Moving Moody though, so I kind of shut up. ''It was a good pun,'' Lupin consoled me. You know you're about to meet a messy end when even Lupin tries to comfort you.

So Lupin ended up Hovering Fred to the couch and he covered my twinnie with a blanket and everything, and Fred was just a pacifier shy of looking like a big baby, and I stumbled up the stairs and crashed in the first bed I found. I was tired and hungry – that porridge was disgusting and no human being could eat more than a spoon or two before giving up on life, and Lupin's tea had just kind of opened my appetite, but anyway. I was also really missing Verity and her biscuits and her cutting remarks. You don't know life until you've had Verity holding your figurative masculinity in her baby soft hands. So yeah, I was also a bit weepy and a little too tired to sleep. How does that work, by the way? If you're tired, shouldn't it be easier to fall asleep? But yeah. It was all really awful and dramatic.

I wondered if that was what my life was going to be like. I mean, when you've seen a bloke's head decorating a Knockturn Alley wall, you've pretty much seen it all. It doesn't get much classier than that. I wondered if maybe somebody else was going to see _my_ head decorate a wall, like some sort of twisted life cycle of the caterpillar or something. I don't know. I didn't know then, and I certainly don't know now. But I didn't end up as an all-natural wall paint, so I think that counts for something.

#

There were some things we just took for granted. Like, the sky was blue, the grass was green, Hogwarts was the safest place in the world, and Headmaster Dumbledore was there to guide us. I don't think I can properly explain what he meant to us. He wasn't just an old colour-blind man in weirdo robes who kept spouting off about music and love and made up words. Fucking hell, the way I say it, it sounds like he was the wizard edition if a hippie. Not that he wasn't, but – fuck.

Look, Dumbledore was the living and breathing personification of our age of prosperity. Like, that lovely time of peace between Grindelwald and You-Know-Who, when people got married painfully young and had dozens of kids like my mum and dad, and they had tonnes of cutesy pets and went to school and got educated and what not – that was the Headmaster. That was him.

When he died, it was the end of an era. Not just that, it was the end of the belief that he was there for us. Now, he would never be there again. I mean, we held hopes, but resurrection just doesn't happen. And if it does happen, then you need to _kill it with fire_. But Dumbledore had literally built nations and fathered the people of Britain. Every child that had passed through Hogwarts had been taken under his wing and nurtured and taught and then sent out of the nest to spread its wings and fly and – and shit. Just, _shit_. Shit shit shitting _shit_.

When we got the news, me and Verity were in the shop. Fred was off doing Oder work because apparently I was traumatised and should be left alone to heal or some tripe like that. Nobody ever claimed my mum was stupid. She could sell love potions to Veelas if you let her talk for long enough. But anyway.

When we heard it – from the fucking radio again, _fuck you_ , Order – it was like … I don't know, and I'm getting fucking tired of that sentence. Verity's eyes got all big and watery and she dropped her quill so that it made a mess on the register and she didn't even notice it, which told me she was really blanking out and not just faking it. Besides, Verity had never faked a thing in her entire life; she was too honest for that.

''Mr Weasley,'' she said finally, I got goose-bumps because her voice was just so eerily toneless, the way I imagined Death Eater masks would sound like. ''Do you think they're telling the truth?''

They had no reason to lie about it. In fact, they had more reason to say that the Headmaster was actually still breathing since it would prevent the riots sure to crop up, and I told Verity so. I mean, what was I supposed to say?

''I see,'' she murmured, and that was that. After the expression she'd worn I'd been expecting something more than that, but her face just sort of went back to her default expression: a little bit tired, a little bit angry, and very exasperated. I think she developed it as a way to deal with me and Fred, because I can't remember her having it when she first got the job as our manager. Actually, I'm still not all that sure about the position she held in the shop; hell, she might've owned the place for all I know.

Fred floo-ed into the shop a few hours later, all messy hair and soot in his clothes, saying: ''Georgie, did you hear the news? Lupin told me they're telling the truth,'' and ''They didn't tell the whole thing. The Death Eaters invaded Hogwarts and Snape turned out to be a traitor, and Ron and Ginny are _fine_ , thank Merlin –'' I think my heart just kind of stopped at that second part, and only resumed beating once I heard that Snotty Ronnie and Princess Ginerva were whole and healthy, if a bit shaken. The Snape part was harder to swallow, and I wondered why I hadn't expected it. But Snape had been the one to tell the Order that those grunts were going to the black market.

The three of us sort of built a pillow fort that night. Yeah, kiddies, laugh it up – your awesome Uncle George was building a pillow fort when he was over seventeen, so what? But, yeah. Fred hogged all the blankets and Verity brought biscuits and I told horrible dirty jokes that made Verity wrinkle her nose in disgust and Fred roar in laughter and we all kind of played children's games and waited for morning to come and chase away the monsters. It was a good night, I remember. I never did forget the exact gobsmacked look on Fred's face when Verity accepted his dare to snog me, and I found out that, for all her professionalism, she had a pierced tongue.

#

So you know how I said that I always sic my kids on Angie so I don't have to deal with them, and how they never go to her? Yeah, I kind of lied. I mean, I didn't _lie_ , but I didn't tell the whole truth either. See, there's one event all the kids know about in stark black and white detail. It's the sky bound battle the Dark Lord himself took part in, the one in which their one-eared Uncle George actually _became_ one-eared: the Battle of the Seven Potters. Or that's what Hermione named it in her book at least.

Harry makes sure that particular battle doesn't get forgotten. He says it's because of Moody. I say _fuck that shit_. Moody didn't give a damn about remembrance either way and he hated it when people used bloody adjectives in their speech, so he was bound to hate people talking about him more than necessary. Also, he never allowed himself to be socially obligated by or to anything, so he would probably see Harry's work as a waste of time and a lily-livered attempt at pacifying the masses at large.

You know, I can't actually remember what it was like to have both ears. I mean, I see myself in the pictures and I know what I looked like and everything – but I can't recall the _feeling_ of it. Which sounds really stupid because who actually does know what it feels like to have both ears? They're just _there_ , and then one of them isn't, and you don't really feel the difference. At least I didn't.

Fred kicked up a fuss about it, and so did mum, and so did everyone else. But me? Yeah. I felt holey. I was now a certified saint and no one was going to get me down. People got pretty angry about it, you know, but I still don't understand why. I mean, it's my ear, I think I'm more than qualified to decide when it's appropriate to make jokes about it not being there anymore. I'm probably the only one who was qualified for that. But whatever. They got over it eventually.

Now, you might me wondering why I'm rambling on about my ear when I should be recounting the terrific tale of the chase on broomstick/Thestral/what have you? The answer is: I don't remember any of it. Blood loss messes with your head, and given how it was my head that was bleeding out probably explains away why I dreamt about Harry wearing a sparkly Unicorn shirt and riding a motorbike while singing at the top of his voice, while the rest of us followed in his … motorbike-steps? … and created background music. Yeah, that was some bloody sick shit right there. There were _rainbow_ _sparkles_ , and not in the fun way.

But yeah. What was I talking about? Oh, Moody, right. See, I said I don't remember any of the battle, and I guess that I kind of lied again. Well, maybe I didn't. It's just that after enough time has passed and your memories have been muddled by head wounds and such, it's a bit hard to differentiate between actual memory and a fantasy patchwork based on the retelling of the story of other people who actually do remember it, hands down and no doubts about it. Anyway. So I remember – or maybe I don't – seeing Moody growl about his malfunctioning eye and then popping it out for a cleaning session. Which was basically him spitting on it and popping it back in – gross, right? I think that cost me about a decade of my life, I shit you not.

Regardless. After all was said and done, I got to drink Firewhiskey in front of mum without her going on a tearful rant about alcoholics and my liver and her being a failure as a mother, and Fred was socially obligated to be my personal slave for about a week because I was now a cripple, and I also got a lot of pity dates from sexy witches who would have felt really bad about turning me down. Wow, that was a long sentence.

So, kids, the moral of this lesson was: don't get your ears cut off, because then you'll hallucinate about The Boy Who Lived wearing a sparkly Unicorn shirt. And you really don't need that mental image playing through your head, trust me.

#

And then there were five. Five unmarried brothers, that is. What did you think I was talking about? Not that marriage is somehow better than murder – kidding, Angie, _kidding_! But seriously. Bill's wedding was like an omen: we were all going to be leashed someday, and it was only a matter of time. Even Charlie is going to be whipped soon; mum will have his balls for earrings if he doesn't contribute to the family with at least one grandchild, born in wedlock or out of it. (We're all kind of waiting for mum's conflicted face when Charlie brings home a baby and dumps it on her because he can't remember who the mother is. On one hand – _grandbaby_! On the other …)

You know how I said I got laid a lot because of my missing ear? I would've got laid _even more_ if the Death Eaters hadn't invaded the wedding. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So I was forced into a snazzy outfit complete with a bowtie and nice dress shoes, as was Fred, and we both got to slowly roast in the scorching sun – which was weird as all hell, because hello? England, someone? We're not supposed to have such hot days. But then again, all the witches wore these really adorable tiny dresses so I suppose it could be forgiven.

You know, I remember the wedding in vivid detail: the tent, the cake, the music … those stupid little birds that appeared when Bill and Fleur kissed … I remember it. But most of all I remember Fred. _''When I get married,''_ that's what he said. At the time I thought I'd like to see it, maybe, my brother and Angie kissing like two saps in front of a bunch of other people – it sounded nice. I'd be the best man and Angie would wear a yellow dress because white makes her look fat according to her – and I just – fuck.

When I married, it was like a twisted version of what I'd imagined Fred's wedding would be like. Bloody hell, even the bride was the same. And I felt like such a bastard, stealing my dead brother's girl like somehow our blood relation made it alright – disgusting. I almost cancelled the wedding that day, left Angie at the Alter and everything – Bill talked me out of it. Said: ''You love her, it doesn't matter what was before, you love her now and she loves you too,'' and I listened. Help me Merlin, I listened. And then when my Roxy was born I went through the same thing, thinking: _this is my brother's child, my baby niece_ – and – I don't know. Sometimes I still think of them like that. I look at our family picture and imagine: Fred and Angie, shoulder to shoulder, smiling like they should be, and their two kids standing next to them, Freddie giving Roxy bunny ears. My life is what Fred wanted, all of it. A wife, two kids – girl first, and then a boy – and even a fucking dog that wags its tail when you pet it under the chin. I'm living the dream life, isn't that just fucking amazing?

But anyway. That's when we got the news: the Ministry has fallen. The Minister is dead. _Run_ , that's what I heard. As if the bloody Ministry hadn't fallen long before that, and we weren't all just playing charades and pretending that things were still normal. So panic spread. People Apparating left and right, getting the hell out of there.

Me and Fred ended up at Aunt Muriel's. Such a shame, you know, the old bat just really hated us after the unfortunate dungbomb incident, not that we didn't reciprocate the sentiment. I mean, what the hell kind of aunt tells her poor nephew that his ears are _''lopsided''_ after he had one of them cut off? That has got to be a new low for every hellish aunt out there.

Aunt Muriel accepted us in her house with as much pomp as could be expected. ''What the hell was your mother thinking? One set of twins was bad enough, but two? I told Tessie not to let those boys of hers out of sight, and look what happened when she didn't listen…'' Aunt Muriel was kind of crazy. She kept mistaking us for our dead Uncles, and sometimes she even thought that Fabian and Gideon were still alive. She once called me a ''thrice-damned copy'' when I did something of offend her, I can't remember what exactly. Muriel gets offended a lot and really easily, in case you haven't noticed. We didn't bother getting into an argument with her. It would've been pointless, since Muriel always wins through sheer perseverance.

In our room – one because we were twins, I mean come on – it felt a bit like it was the end of the world. ''Do you think the Order…'' Fred was hesitant to finish the thought, and I just sort of shook my head like a dog, like clearing it would somehow help the world at large. My twinnie sighed and carded his hand through his hair in that rouge-ish way of his that always had all the birds swooning. ''Fucking Order,'' he said, but it was … I'm not sure … it wasn't angry? Or upset? More like tired. Yeah, that's it. He was tired, and sad, and – not _defeated_ because we never get defeated no matter what – but … I don't know.

I think that was how we all felt, summed up in two words: _fucking_ Order.

#

We stayed at Aunt Muriel's for over two weeks because it was too dangerous to get out, and Muriel was too far gone to remember how to make a portkey. It was kind of sad, you know, because she had been so clever – and even I had to appreciate the fact that a woman as old as Dumbledore was still all there at her age – and then she was just sort of … flopping. I don't know how to describe it better. Her mind was flip-flopping, on and off, on and off: sometimes she was as sharp as whip with a tongue to match, while other times – well. I made a swirly motion with my finger around my missing ear and Fred used a funny voice to say: ''Hello, nobody's home, may I take a message?'' and we went on with our lives.

Why didn't we just use the floo, you ask? Well, sweetie-pie, it wasn't that easy. See, the Ministry regulates floo usage, and guess who was now in charge of the Ministry? Ba- _ching_ , ba- _ching_! That's right! The Dark Lord Mouldy-Shorts Himself, along with his cronies. So we were kind of stuck with Nutty Muriel, sequestered in our room upstairs with the lacy doilies and creepy porcelain dolls that could blink when you moved their heads.

I don't think that I can properly depict the horror of the situation to you. All Weasleys were known as Order sympathisers and even members outright, so we were Public Enemies. We were literally cut off from the world. The food we ate was what Muriel's neighbours brought her (Merlin forbid she actually leave her house), and whenever the muggle girl who brought it came around we had to stay as quiet as possible and _not breathe_ , because we didn't know who might be watching and – it was awful.

You know when I said at the beginning of this story that our clothes were rank and disgusting? Yeah, this was it. Muriel didn't wash her clothes. Someone else did, just like someone else cooked for her and cleaned for her and watered her garden for her and – starting to see the picture here? We couldn't do _any_ of that. Fred and me were going stir crazy. Case in point: ''Hey, Georgie? Do you think I'd look good in these skirts?'' Yeah, I shit you not. My twinnie was contemplating wearing old lady skirts made of tweed, and we were playing with fucking dolls because there was nothing else to do.

It took us two weeks to be rescued from that hell and, once more, it was Kingsley Shacklebolt's glorious shiny bald head that came for us. ''Come on boys,'' he said. ''Time to move.'' I don't think I'd ever been happier than I was in that moment. If I had to watch Fred try on another hat that was pretending to actually be a forest I was going to scream, vomit and faint, and probably not in that order either.

We Apparated to … somewhere … and then again and again and again till we reached the Shop. I can't tell you glad I was to be home again, even if only for a few moments. And –

Verity was there. ''Mr Weasley, and Mr Weasley!'' She had red-rimmed eyes like she'd been crying a lot and her purple lipstick was visible only on the edges of her mouth because she'd licked it off, and I realised that I had missed her _so bloody much_. ''What is happening, there were men coming here –''

''No time for that, Miss,'' Kingsley tried to pacify her but there was no reasoning with Verity. She drew herself up to be as tall as possible which was really tall for a girl, saying: ''Wherever you're going, take me with you,'' and she didn't let up until he agreed to her demands. And then we grabbed our clothes and other things, and Fred grabbed a box of unopened Honeydukes' chocolate that we had bought before the wedding and – well.

''Mr Weasley, you can't eat that!'' Verity was scandalised, probably because I couldn't really remember how old that chocolate was. So I grabbed a few Candy in a Can's instead and we were off, this time with Verity in tow, spinning towards some nebulous destination that promised relative safety. Relative, mind you. There was no place left truly safe anymore. But we followed Kingsley's lead anyway because he had an alright plan. We had followed people for much less than that – we followed Harry because he had a good determined face, and Dumbledore for his neat fluffy beard. Well, at least I followed then for that, but whatever.

#

I don't like to remember what happened after that. Mostly because it's a _secret_ , and also because I'm ashamed of the things I did. You know, when you're a kid you make up all these plans, like: I'm going to be the best in Charms and open a shop and fall in love and stay with my twinnie forever, and – want to hear what my dream life was going to be like? And I mean _my_ , not Fred's.

I was going to get a Mastery in Charms and open a shop with Fred – we did that, minus the Charms part. I wanted to fall in love with a girl who wasn't too pretty nor too ugly, and I didn't want to ever have kids because babies frightened me – still do, as a matter of fact – and I wanted to be the best uncle that ever lived to any kids Fred would have. I was going to be the cool uncle who bought them awesome Christmas presents and sent postcards from freaky places. That was me. That _should_ have been me. It didn't turn out quite like I wanted it to.

You see, I don't really know where Kingsley took us. He never said, and we never asked. But Verity was there. Now, about that average girl I wanted to fall in love with … she wasn't Verity. Except that she _was_. It happened like this:

The safe house wasn't much better than Aunt Muriel's place. But at least there were no tweed old lady dresses or creep dolls. The food was way better, too. We actually had soup that was warm and thick, and we got to stretch our legs in order to clean up and such. Kingsley went away once we were settled in, saying her had work to do – probably more Order members trapped in horrible places. He returned a few times with different people – Lee Jordan, I don't think I had realised how much I was missing him until I saw him again, scruffy goatee and all, with a letter from Lupin in hand.

Verity became the group mum. She made biscuits and tea and procured toothpaste from magical places only she knew about, and she mediated between us when things got cold and snappy and dangerous. She would say: ''Give it time,'' or ''Have some more bread,'' or even ''Did you wash behind your ears?'' which never failed to make us laugh even though it was a stupid joke. I suppose it took me off my guard, because Verity belonged in silk blouses and high heels and her world was one of glittering make-up and classical music. Not a dingy house with walls that peeled whenever it rained, which was often and a lot.

We started Potterwatch because there was nothing else to do. It was a shitty joke in the start. Lee was bored one day and just started to commentate on the state of Lupin's food. ''Aaand the lentils get it – wrecked under the tooth of this savage wolf –'' He was fucking annoying.

Fred said: ''If you have to say nonsense you might as well talk about The Boy Who Disappeared, Lee!'' By the way, that's what we called Harry – The Boy Who Disappeared. Kinder that just saying he was missing and no one expected him to lift a finger. We all kind of thought he'd skipped country on us. I mean, _we_ knew better, but some things just get into your head and burrow deep inside and refuse to leave no matter how much you try to forget them.

So we got the idea to report on what Harry did. The Infiltration of the Ministry was our first big broadcast. It was the first and only broadcast that all could hear about, no safe-words needed. The next time the password was ''Golden,'' as in the Golden Trio.

I wasn't all that involved with the radio thing. I got the better job. I would leave the house and snatch newspapers and spy on people and what have you, gathering information we could spin into a good story. Most of what we reported was straight up fabricated – real events spun so that Harry and the gang were doing something worthwhile and important. We were fooling ourselves on top of others. Kingsley disapproved of our lies, but he helped out when he could. A lot of the real info we got through him.

But, back to Verity. See, she was … fading. It's not the right word, but she just wasn't as vibrant as I remembered her. She broke off little pieces of herself and fed them to us and she never got anything in return and just – she paled in comparison to the old Verity.

As I said, we tinkered with the radio a lot, and then a song came on. It was the one mum loved – Celestina Warbeck, old and scratchy and classy, famous for a good reason, a romantic – or at least mum claimed so. I think I understood then why people loved Warbeck. She had this thing about her voice where it just … made you forget everything except the music. '' _You charmed the heart right off me, to my whole life you hold the key, you cast your spell and suddenly I cannot forget you!_ ''

Verity gave this little gasp when I grabbed her, a squeak crossed with a warble, and she laughed like a mindless little girl when I spun her. It was gross, the way we danced to my mum's favourite song, swaying because there was no place in the dining room for anything else, and Fred and Lee and Lupin were watching us like we'd lost our fucking minds – it was everything I ever wanted. And I sung the bits of lyrics I knew, mumbled and hummed the parts I didn't, and I fell in love. I'd _been_ falling in love with Verity for ages, and this was just the expected culmination of those … things, I suppose. No better way to describe it and anyway, no one single word could ever describe Verity.

Afterwards some other song came on, but we were still dancing, slow and slower and slowest, and Verity tucked her blonde head under my chin and I thought I would cry because it wasn't fucking fair, falling in love then and there, when we all knew we would probably just die really soon, most likely the next day, and I wanted an eternity with her and Fred and Lee in that stinky old room and – and it just wasn't enough. It was never _going_ to be enough, no matter how hard I tried.

I think maybe that's why Angie never talked about Fred. Because if she did, I would talk about Verity, and I'm pretty sure that she's afraid of being judged as lesser to Verity. But Verity was my first love and those feeling _never_ die, no matter the time and age. Verity as she was then remains inside my brain, sleeping with her hair wet and matted because there were no clean towels to dry it with, waiting for something that was never going to come.

#

They broke into fucking Gringotts. Do you know what that meant? What the goblins were regarded as? I mean, shit, but that just shouldn't have happened. Because the goblins wanted retribution, and they wanted it paid in _blood_. But an escape on dragon-back was still amazing. Potterwatch had a field day that evening – because Harry wasn't The Boy Who Disappeared after all.

Lee just sort of … took up smoking. That was his way of dealing with everything, you know. It was either smoking, drugs or alcohol, or sex. But Lee hates drugs with a fiery passion – a druggie cousin who dropped dead of overdose will do that to you – and he's the meanest drunk this side of the Equator, so that was out too, and since no woman in her right mind was going to spread her legs for a known Order supporter (Verity was fucking _mine_ ), it left cigarettes as a coping method. But the first time Lee lit a smoke was right before we broadcasted about the bank break in, and he coughed and hacked so damn loud I thought he was going to swallow his tongue – he made the same sounds Harry's muggle cousin did when we slipped him the Toffee.

But anyway: so the whole world was in a turmoil because the Prophet reported that Bellatrix Lestrange was the one to break in, and I know that because I risked life and limb to get that paper from a scruffy kid in neon green trousers. Bill was hopping mad, he was, talking about ''a new war the second we end this one, George, do you know what the goblins will do to wizardkind for this?'' and that was important too, because Harry and the gang stayed at the Cottage with Fleur's delicious cooking, which was totally unfair because what we were living on was bloody _lentil_ _soup_ , canned and everything, and not even Verity's magic could make it taste good.

The password for the radio was Lupin that day, not for the Professor – who sometimes still showed us little tricks of the trade – I hadn't even thought of shortening spell incantations the way Lupin did it, he could just say _Dio_ instead of _Incendio_ , and – I'm getting off topic – it was actually in honour of month-old baby Lupin with his mother's ever-changing hair. Fred made this wounded little noise when we heard about the birth, by the way, and then he just started laughing like a maniac and congratulating Lupin on being a dad the way the rest of us were, and – it was a good day.

The Gringotts break in was the talk of the century, I assure you of that. We were enamoured with the story, recounting and retelling it like no one's business, and I managed to forget about everything for that short time, from Lee's annoying comments and our nasty soup-based diet all the way to Verity's thin-thin- _thin_ wrists, and – it was good. For once we weren't thinking about our imprisonment.

You know, I learnt then that we weren't meant to be things in cages. We were supposed to – I don't know? Walk and run and fly when you can, but we were never supposed to be held with our wings clipped. Angie told me once, sometime before we got married, that she spent the entirety of the war at her grandpa's, helping him around the house and dealing with his illness – and she'd longed for freedom of Quidditch like never before. ''I may not have m'wings, but I sure do want 'em,'' that's what she said. And I understood her completely, because while we were broadcasting the unembellished truth for the first time since Potterwatch began, we had hope.

#

Verity died in the Battle of Hogwarts. I could talk about it, about kissing her before we split up and then never seeing her again because some bastard blew her up like a confetti shower – I was wrong, it wasn't me who became all natural wall paint, it was _Verity_ – but I won't. What's the point of picking at old wounds that have barely healed? All I would find is regret and bittersweet. I won't talk about Fred either, because my twinnie died the way he wanted to: with his wand in hand and fighting the good fight, and I respect that. I respect it a lot.

I'll talk about Bellatrix instead. Because, remember when I said that we respected the bitch for her sheer strength, her ability to kill without remorse or second thoughts? I think I respected my mum even more than that, because mum avenged Fred and the Longbottoms and countless others, and watching Bellatrix die was so bloody therapeutic.

But I think I pitied the bitch as well. We all did, really, because after the stories you heard about her and then seeing her, and realising that she was just a rabid attack dog too enamoured with its master – it makes her less than a witch, less than a muggle – _subhuman_ , you could say. And it was You-Know-Who who brought her down to that level. Humiliated her and praised her in turns till she lost her mind going in circles, and in the end it was Him who was the monster. The boogieman under the bed, wild-eyed and bloodthirsty and starving, turned out to about as real as our expectations. Bellatrix lost her life by my mother's hand.

You know, having thought about for a long time now – seriously, I've been ruminating and brooding about Fred for years now – I think I'm glad it wasn't Bellatrix herself who murdered my brother. Twinnie didn't deserve to be killed by her. He didn't deserve to be killed by anyone, but I'm glad Bellatrix especially wasn't the one. She was … too filthy to carry Fred's blood on her hands.

So yeah. The war ended. The curtain closed, the lights went out, the actors took off their masks. But I still had nightmares and I still hated the taste of lentil soup, and Lupin was still laid out on the stone floor with his cheeks sunken in and waxy – there were still orphans and fools and liars and – and shit. Nothing was fixed. We just … the status quo was returned. Nothing got better, just went back to the way it was before. Which fucking sucks, but what the hell can I do about it? Just – _shit_.

#

 **Unedited, un-beta'd.**


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